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Monday, March 31, 2008

Be Smart. Be Safe.

At 8:00am on Saturday, Dad and I were the only ones at the group run. Slowly others started to trickle in. I should have taken this as a sign of the odd things to come. In total there were six of us split into two groups: Andy, Dante, Brian and Doug, Dad, me. Less than two miles into the run, we came upon the first group. We saw Andy and Dante, but it appeared the third was on the ground. As we approached we saw it wasn't Brian.

The first group had found a female runner face down on the side of the trail. She was breathing and her heart was beating, but she was unconscious. Brian ran up to the houses to call 911. I went through my CPR and first aid checklist. She breathed heavy and you could see her heart beating in her neck. We took off our jackets and put them over her. She moaned a lot and her eyes were open but completely glassed over. We asked her some commands and she didn't follow any of them. Finally, the parametics arrived and awakened her and she had no idea what had happened or anything. She looked completely frightened.

Here's the moral of the story. She was not carrying any ID. I checked her pockets and I checked her shoes. Nothing. She had been running by herself. Please, if you have to go running by yourself, carry ID. I got Road IDs for myself and my family last year and now I know why it is so important. Please, be smart and safe out there.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Wow--that's really scary, and really good advice (that I need to be better about following. Not that I do much running anymore, but I do take the kids for walks pretty frequently when it's nice out.) I'm glad she was okay.